Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance recently revealed that he told his son to “keep quiet” about the Pokemon Pikachu during a phone call with the former president and shortly before the Republican National Convention. The Ohio senator explained the circumstances on the Full Send podcast.
The politician was speaking to YouTube comedian Nelk Boys and said the incident happened after Mr Trump called him up to ask him to be his running mate. Notably, the former president officially named the senator as his running mate during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month.
Mr Vance was flying with his family from Milwaukee to the RNC when he discovered there was no Wi-Fi on the plane. He landed an hour later and had more than a hundred messages. He said he got a message from the Trump campaign that said, “Hey, you just missed a very important call.” He then called Mr Trump and said, “Hey sir, what’s up?” The 45th US president told him, “JD, you just missed a very important phone call, and now I’m going to have to go with someone else.”
Mr Vance added, “My son, who’s seven, is in the hotel room with me. And he’s very interested in Pokemon cards right now. He’s going through a Pokemon phase…he’s really interested in it. So he’s trying to talk to me about Pikachu and I’m on the phone to Donald Trump and I’m saying, ‘Son, shut up about Pikachu for 30 seconds.'”
J.D. Vance told his son to “shut up” about Pokemon cards while on the phone with Trump.
Vance: “Son, shut up about Pikachu for about 30 seconds.” pic.twitter.com/zTtaw49duc
— PatriotTakes ?? (@patriottakes) August 2, 2024
He added: “This is the most important phone call of my life. Please let me take this phone call.” Mr Vance said that because his son “doesn’t understand what the president of the United States means,” he did not care that Mr Trump was on the phone.
Mr Vance’s comments have been widely criticised since being shared on social media.
“If J.D. Vance is going to do one thing, it’s serve as Donald Trump’s most awkward, creepy, and unpopular running mate,” the Democratic National Convention wrote in a statement on its website.
“What a truly horrible human being,” Rep. Wiley Nickel, a North Carolina Democrat, wrote on X. “J.D. Vance tells his 7-year-old son to ‘shut up’ because he’s talking to Trump. I have a simple rule in Congress. There are no more important calls than my kids.”
One person said: “He was on the phone with President Trump. Calm down son.”
Another added: “It’s even more shameful that he’s thinking it’s a flex.”
One user said, “It would be better not to have children than talking to them like this.”
